Monday, 1 July 2013

The Year Five students have spent the last eight weeks focusing
on their ‘My Country’ assignment. This assignment was designed to encourage
students to explore their own knowledge and answer a question that could not be
answered by simply looking it up on Google. They needed to create an online
resource as their final product.

The students needed to answer these questions;

Where does my family come
from?

Why is this country a fantastic place?

In order to do this they needed to research their country,
specifically focusing on the geographical and cultural information. They also
needed to interview a family member about this country. Majority of the
students were able to complete their interview in person but some completed an
international Skype call and filmed
the conversation using Screenr.

The next section of their assignment was to create a 10-day
holiday to this country. Students needed to include flight details and costs,
other travel costs (cars, taxis, etc), accommodation, sight seeing and attractions,
food expenses and spending money. The created a budget for their holiday as
well as an itinerary.

The final section was to persuade their audience (Year Four and
Year Six students) to go on their holiday. They needed to create a range of
resources to assist them with this. They also had to focus on the language they
were using and how this could persuade someone to agree with them.

Due to this being such a long process, the students followed the
model of Solution Fluency. They worked through the Six D’s. Define, Discover,
Dream, Design, Deliver and Debrief. This is a model I was introduced to earlier
in the year at a development day with Lee Crocket. The below link
explores the Six D’s in more detail.

This essential 21st
Century Fluency is actually the foundation upon which the other Fluencies are
built. Recently, two longitudinal studies found that teaching a structured
problem-solving process to a student will instantly increase their IQ by 10%
and that this increase is sustained throughout their lives. Let’s make sure our
students benefit from this. Everyone identifies problem solving as essential,
but without a process like Solution Fluency, it’s just an ideal that never gets
implemented.

There
are so many great student achievements that come out of setting an assignment
like this. Not only are the subjects being integrated together (English,
S&E and Mathematics), but they also have the opportunity to be responsible
for their own learning. The rubric they are assessed on has multiple levels of
success and students can therefore set a reachable goal. Students were taught
about SMART Goals (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely). They
referred back to this throughout the assignment to make sure they were pushing
themselves to do their best work and, also, not setting unachievable goals.

I found
that majority of my students challenged themselves and achieved what they had
set out to do. I was extremely proud of all the work they completed and the
constant reflection they did throughout this task.

The
Year Five classroom will be open to visitors on Wednesday 3rd July
from 2.30-4pm if you would like to come and observe their works. All families and
friends are welcome.

I am very much looking forward to running
the next 21st Century Fluency task in our classroom. Stay tuned for
more.